Schopenhauer on Pride

The cheapest form of pride by contrast is national pride. For it betrays in the person imprisoned by it an absence of the individual qualities of which he could be proud, in favor of those he is prepared to share with so many millions. A person endowed with valuable personal merits would rather understand the defects of his own nation, and keep them constantly and clearly before his own eyes. But that poor wretch who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, will always seize upon the crudest basis for pride, the nation to which he belongs. In so doing he commits himself to defend all the failings and foolishness which characterize it with his every word and deed.

—- Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, ch iv in Schopenhauers Sämmtliche Werke in fünf Bänden, vol. 4, p. 242 (S.H. transl.)